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PSYCHE : A STUDY OF THE SOUL 



DR. HUNTINGTON'S BRIEFS. 

i2mo, paper, 25 cents ; cloth, 50 cents each. 

1. A Short History of the Book of Common 

Prayer. 

2. Popular Misconceptions of the Episcopal 

Church. 

3. The Spiritual House : A First Lesson in 

Architecture, 

4. Psyche : A Study of the Soul. 

5. Four Key-words of Religion. (In Prep- 

aration.) 

6. Heart, Head and Hand in Confirmation. 

(In Preparation.) 



THOMAS WHITTAKER 

Publisher 

2 AND 3 Bible House, New York 



PSYCHE 



A STUDY OF THE SOUL 



BY 



WILLIAM REED HUNTINGTON D.D. 

ti 

Rector of Grace Church New York 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS WHITTAKER 

2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE 

1899 



^ 



Copy ^ 



Copyright, 1899 
By THOMAS WHITTAKER 



By Exchange 
Aflliy and Navy Club 
JAN^UARY 16 1934 



HUBLBT PRIKTINO 00. L'T'D 

TTPB8BTTIRS JIMC ELBOTROTTFBRS 

TORK. PBNNA 



on 



CONTENTS. 

^be SouU 

PAGB 
I. 

The Mystery of Her Origin 7 

II. 

The Methods of Her Discipline 23 

III. 
The Enemies of Her Peace 41 

IV. 

The Sorrows of Her Pilgrimage 57 

V. 

The Splendor of Her Destiny 71 

The Cure of Souls 85 



(5) 



I. 

THE MTSTEET OF SEE OEIGm. 



THE SOUL 
I. 

THE MYSTERY OF HER ORIGIN. 

When Edwin, King of Northnmbria, under 
the influence of Paulinus, his queen's chaplain, 
was considering whether he would or would not 
relinquish the old paganism in which he had 
been brought up and embrace the religion of 
Christ, he called a council of his lords to dis- 
cuss the matter. One after another the courtiers 
gave their opinions, some for, some against. 
Finally there stood up a noble whose name has 
not come down to us, but whose spoken sentence 
will last as long as the history of England con- 
tinues to be read, so powerfully does its imagi- 
native quality appeal to what is deepest in us. 

" Man's life, O King," he said, " is like unto a 
little sparrow which, whilst your majesty is 
feasting by the fire in your banqueting-hall 
with your royal retinue, flies in at one window 
and out at another. For the short time that the 
little creature remaineth in the house we see it, 

9 



10 P8YCSE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

and then it is well sheltered from the wind and 
weather, but presently it passeth from cold to 
cold, and whence it came and whither it goes, we 
are altogether ignorant. Thus we can give some 
account of our soul during its abode in the body, 
whilst housed and harbored therein ; but where 
it was before and how it fareth after, is to us 
altogether unknown. If, therefore, Paulinus, in 
his preaching will certainly inform us herein, he 
deserveth, in my opinion, to be entertained." 

Half of what this Northumbrian nobleman 
expected of him Paulinus, preacher and theolo- 
gian, was able to perform, but with respect to 
the other half he must have felt himself practi- 
cally powerless. For although for us Christian 
believers, the window out of which the sparrow 
flies fronts upon the sunshine, and we can follow, 
for a little way, at least, the bird's journey into 
light, on the side where entrance was affected 
all things lie in shadow still, and no matter how 
eagerly we peer out into the darkness, vision there 
is none. 

I have undertaken to speak to you at these 
Wednesday-noon services during Lent, about the 
Soul, the Mystery of her Origin, the Methods of 
her Discipline, the Enemies of her Peace, the 
Sorrows of her Pilgrimage and the Splendor of 
her Destiny. 

When I consider the far reach of these descrip- 
tive titles, the length and breadth of the vast 



TEE MYSTERY OF BER ORIGIN, 11 

area they cover, I wonder at my own venture- 
someness in endeavoring such a task. I can but 
hope that the intense interest of the subject itself 
may, in some small measure, make up for what 
is sure to prove the insufficiency of my dealings 
with it. 

God and the Soul, — these are the two focal 
points which determine the whole orbit of re- 
ligion. Cardinal ISTewman in his History of his 
Religious Opinions tells us, that although there 
was a time, in his early life, when he questioned 
and doubted about many things, there were two 
points with respect to which he never wavered, 
the reality of God and the reality of his own ex- 
istence. Clearly there can be no religion worthy 
of the name that does not presuppose, and not 
only presuppose but somehow link together these 
two, the Soul and the Author of the Soul. Tou 
observe that I am using the word "Soul" in 
the very largest and most comprehensive sense 
which it is possible to attach to it. I am using 
it in the sense in which David uses it when he 
cries, " Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that 
is within me praise his holy name." In starting 
out upon the consideration of a subject it is all 
important that a speaker and his hearers should 
have a common understanding as to the meaning 
of the principal words that are to be employed. 

I venture, therefore, to emphasize my purpose 
of invariably using the word " soul " in the inclu- 



12 PSYCSE: A STUDY OF TEE SOUL. 

sive sense which makes it cover all in man which 
is not distinctly and evidently outward and ma- 
terial ; all that we miss, to put it negatively, all 
that we take note of as being absent, as having 
departed, when we look a dead man in the face. 

It is the more necessary to insist upon this 
largeness of definition because we so frequently 
hear " the soul " spoken of as if it were sim- 
ply a fractional portion of our inner being, one 
pigeon-hole in a complicated secretary, one apart- 
ment in a many-roomed house, one alcove in a 
great library full of such places of studious re- 
treat. The notion seems to be that this particu- 
lar pigeon-hole, apartment, alcove has been set 
apart for the reception of things serious and 
solemn ; and that all interests other than serious 
and solemn ones are else wise housed and provided 
for. 

But why in the world should we thus dwarf 
and stint and cramp the Soul by the meagreness 
of our definition ? 

Christ says, " fear not them which kill the body, 
but are not able to kill the soul." Evidently he 
would have us infer that the destruction of the 
body, precious as the body may be as the instru- 
ment or organ of its tenant, would leave the soul 
intact. Our own observation teaches us that the 
loss of a limb has no effect whatever upon the reach 
of a man's reasoning-powers, upon the strength of 
his will, or upon the warmth of his affections. 



THE MYSTERY OF HER ORIGIN. 13 

When an arm is amputated no fragment of the soul 
goes with it. The man may suffer the most ter- 
rible mutilations but, if he survives them, he is the 
same still as respects intelligence and character. 
Nothing has been lopped from the soul, the in- 
ner man remains of full stature as before. Why 
should it be otherwise with the soul were the 
entire body, and not one single portion of it to 
be reft away? The soul, under such circum- 
stances might not be able to express itself, per- 
haps not able to be conscious of itself, until 
newly-housed in such body as it should please 
God to give ; but there is no reason to suppose 
that it would permanently lose any possession, 
power, faculty, appetite, sense or desire that was 
native and natural to it. It would still be, what 
it was before, the soul. 

I am not forgetful, even though for my pres- 
ent purpose I am obliged to slur it, I am not for- 
getful of the important distinction which St. 
Paul draws between soul and spirit. According 
to his analysis of human nature, man is three- 
fold rather than twofold ; body, soul and spirit, 
rather than simply body and soul. There is 
great value in this triple classification because it 
enables us to sort the non-material part of us 
according to grade and comparative value, as- 
signing to spirit so much as is nearest to those 
ranges of being which lie above us, and to soul 
so much as is nearest to those ranges of being 



14 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF TEE SOUL. 

which lie below us. God is a Spirit, we do not 
speak of Him as a Soul ; on the other hand, the 
animals have souls, not deathless souls, but souls. 

"With this restricted use of the word soul 
as indicating so much of our being as is non- 
material, while yet confessedly inferior to a cer- 
tain better and loftier component known as 
spirit, we shall, in this study and meditation of 
ours, have nothing to do. St. Paul, for a certain 
definite purpose of his own, found the tripartite 
division desirable and helpful; for us and our 
needs the dual division (body and soul) which we 
find sanctioned in the Psalms and in the Gospels 
will suffice. We will let it be understood be- 
tween us that we are using soul in the sense of 
David's " all that is within man," and as compre- 
hending and including all that St. Paul meant 
when he spoke of soul and spirit. 

And only consider, for a moment, how much 
that same " all " covers and signifies. Every per- 
ception, every sensation, every thought, every 
feeling, every movement of the will, every long- 
ing, every desire, every ache or pain, every 
hunger, every thirst, every love or hatred, every 
anger or joy, every shudder of dread, every 
motion of pity, every sentiment of worship, 
every thrill of admiration, every glow of sym- 
pathj^, enters into the inventory of the soul. 
Some of these experiences that I have mentioned 
have probably been associated in your thoughts 



THE MYSTEBY OF REB OBIGIN. 15 

with the body rather than with the soul. 
" Surely," you say, " such things as hunger and 
thirst are bodily desires. What have they to do 
with the soul ? " They have everything to do 
with the soul, I answer. The body, as such, 
cannot hunger or thirst, nor can it feel pain. 
The dead body, the organism from which the 
soul has taken flight does not suffer. It was the 
tenant who felt the pain, not the house in which 
the tenant dwelt. The promise that there shall 
be no more pain does not mean that the souls of the 
righteous, the souls of those who shall be accounted 
worthy to attain that world, are to be incapable of 
feeling pain, it means rather that the conditions 
which cause souls to feel pain will have been re- 
moved. The possibility of feeling joy would seem 
to carry with it and to involve the possibility of 
feeling pain. "We have not a High Priest who 
cannot be touched with a feeling of our infirmi- 
ties, who has forgotten, that is to say, what grief 
and pain and sorrow mean, yet has He entered 
now where sorrow, grief and pain are not. 

Setting aside, therefore, as unworthy, that 
petty notion which would make of the soul a 
sort of pious adjunct of the rest of man's facul- 
ties, let us go on to consider the mystery of the 
soul's origin. Doing so we shall find that no 
matter how long or how laboriously we ponder 
the subject, it is impossible to get beyond the 
statement preserved to us in the second chapter 



16 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

of the Book of Genesis, " The Lord God formed 
man of the dust of the ground and breathed into 
his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a 
living soul." This statement leaves many ques- 
tions unanswered which we should rejoice to see 
answered, but there is one point which it indis- 
putably asserts and that is the divine origin of 
the soul. Man becomes " a living soul " because of 
the inbreathing of the Spirit of God. "Whatever 
else may be shrouded in darkness this much is 
clear. 

Some bold thinkers go so far as to deny that 
the soul ever had a beginning. They hold that 
under one form or another it has existed from all 
eternity, even as to all eternity it will exist, in- 
carnated now under this guise, now under that, 
but still continuing through all this succession of 
changes one and the same soul. Others, believers 
in the preexistence of the soul, are content with 
less exorbitant claims. Instead of going back 
into the eternities, they pause when they have 
reached the beginnings of life upon this planet. 
That was our true birthday they allege. In the 
first soul all souls that ever have been or that 
ever will be were involved, and from it they 
have been, are being, and are to be evolved. 

Directly counter to this view of the matter 
runs the doctrine of creationism as it is called, 
according to which souls are called into being by 
the direct fiat of the Almighty, each century of 



THE MYSTERY OF HEB ORIGIN. 17 

human history counting as many distinct creative 
acts of God as there have been souls born into 
its life. 

It is impossible even swiftly to summarize 
the arguments that are urged by the maintain- 
ers of these various theories or beliefs. Much 
that is plausible may be said in behalf of any one 
of them. 

The doctrine of the soul's preexistence under- 
lies, as we all know, some of the most ancient 
and wide-spread of the religious systems of the 
East. So profound a thinker and so devout a 
Christian as William Wordsworth would appear 
to have held it, at any rate for a season. One of 
the very greatest of the Fathers of the Church 
openly maintained and taught it. Certainly 
there are features not a few in the dawning of a 
child's intelligence to suggest that the soul is re- 
calling and recovering rather than forming for 
the first time its acquaintance with the world in 
the midst of which it finds itself. We may not 
be able to say as confidently as the poet to whom 
I just now made reference has said it : 

** The soul that riseth with us our life's star 
Hath had elsewhere its setting 
And Cometh from afar/' 

but when we look into the eyes of a smiling 
child who has not yet learned to talk and note 
the friendly look of recognition, which seems to 



18 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

say " My soul salutes thy soul, though I cannot 
speak the thought that is in me ; '' we sometimes 
feel disinclined flatly to deny, even though we 
may not be quite ready confidently to assert the 
belief that the soul brings with it into this world 
a certain more or less ample equipment of ex- 
perience gained elsewhere. 

On the other hand, it cannot be pretended that 
this notion of a preexistent life of the soul, finds 
any support worth the calling such from the 
sacred Scriptures. Our Lord Jesus Christ, whilst 
asserting His own preexistence in the strongest 
and clearest terms, nowhere so much as hints or 
suggests that it was a preexistence shared with 
us. "When they sought, as in the case of the man 
born blind, they did seek to force him to commit 
himself on the subject. He refused to gratify 
their curiosity. Here was a man born blind. 
Why was it ? Had he sinned in some previous 
state of existence, and brought this calamity 
upon himself by way of punishment ? Was he 
working out a penalty incurred by wrongdoing 
in some incarnation antedating the one in which 
he then found himself? "Lord," they asked, 
" Who did sin, this man or his parents that he 
was born blind ? " Christ put them off with the 
enigmatical reply, " Neither hath this man sinned 
nor his parents; but that the works of God 
should be made manifest in him." 

Following this reticence of Christ with respect 



THE MYSTERY OF HEB ORIGIN. 19 

to the soul's origination and transmission, the 
Church has steadfastly and scrupulously refrained 
through all the Christian ages from laying down 
the law upon the subject. By the Church, I 
mean the Holy Church Universal, the Church 
throughout the world. 

Local Churches, provincial Churches may have 
dogmatized upon the point, but never the whole 
body of the faithful. There is nothing about it 
in the great Creeds, which have come doAvn to us 
from the primitive times and which we accept as 
summing up the essentials of the doctrine of 
Christ. God is there presented to us as "the 
maker of heaven and earth and of all things 
visible and invisible." 

Among things invisible we must surely count 
the soul, and, if we do so, we acknowledge God 
as the Maker of the Soul. But by what method 
He brings or has brought the soul into being we 
are not told. To neither one of the two leading 
philosophies of the subject (" Traducianism " and 
" Creationism ") does the Church stand committed. 
The record reads, in Scriptures which the Church 
accepts, that " the Lord God formed man of the 
dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils 
the breath of life." 

This assurance that there is in man, however 
humble his beginnings may have been, and how- 
ever seriously those beginnings may have been 
blighted by his own transgressions, a certain 



20 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

whiff, if no more, of the breath of the Eternal, 
this assurance ought to be, for all purposes of 
encouragement and stimulus, enough. 

Traditional theology says that man fell and is 
being gradually lifted up again. Natural science 
declares that it can jB.nd no evidence of the fall- 
ing but does find very much evidence of the lift- 
ing process ; very well then there is one part of 
the path where (pending the clearing up of the 
rest of it) the two may walk together and be 
agreed, let us be thankful that it is the more im- 
portant part. 

You may say to me, " But why call attention 
to subjects which are confessedly shrouded in 
darkness. With so many questions that are free 
from all ambiguity and uncertainty awaiting treat- 
ment, why approach so difficult and far-away 
a theme as the mystery of the origin of the 
Soul?" 

"Well I have no excuse but this, and I confess 
that it appears to me a valid one ; that it is good 
for people, now and then, to enter into the 
shadow of great mysteries and to be made re- 
alize that, notwithstanding all our boast of elec- 
tric lighting and X-rays, there are still some 
things left in human life that are not so easily 
seen through after all. The Temple of the Most 
High God at Jerusalem was held not to have 
been fully consecrated, until "the cloud filled 
the house of the Lord." Then spake Solomon, 



TEE MYSTERY OF HEB OMIGIK 21 

"The Lord said that He would dwell in the 
thick darkness." 

Mystery has its uses and a religion from which 
all sense of mystery has been banished is a poor 
and thin affair. There is no need of our envying 
the man whose delight in mountain scenery is 
measured by the degree of his acquaintance with 
the altitudes and the temperatures ; and to whose 
mind the beating of the sea against the rocks 
summons up only such reflections as the tables 
of the nautical almanac suggest and warrant. 
The true pupil and child of ]!^ature is he to whom, 
most of all, Nature's mysteriousness appeals. It 
is more of awe we need if we would deeply 
learn. 

I have occasion to come into this Church at 
many hours of the day and often when the build- 
ing is unoccupied, and I have become very fa- 
miliar with its varying moods. I like it best 
when there is least of glare and most of shadow, 
least of that sort of light which makes all things 
plain, and most of that sort which makes some 
things dim and sombre. And so, perhaps, after 
all it will have done us no harm this morning to 
have pondered together the " mystery" of the ori- 
gin of the soul. 



11. 

THE METHODS OF HER DISCIPLINE. 



IL 

THE METHODS OF HER DISCIPLINE. 

The discipline or training of the soul is a mat- 
ter which chiefly concerns Him to whom all souls 
belong. I have promised to speak to you this 
morning about the methods of the soul's disci- 
pline. Let us not suffer ourselves for one mo- 
ment to forget who it is that disciplines the soul, 
for his are the methods we are to study. There 
are methods which we follow in the endeavors 
we make to discipline ourselves ; there are meth- 
ods which others, our fellow men, follow in their 
attempt to subject us to such discipline as in 
their judgment, we require. Upon neither of 
these is it my purpose to enlarge. What methods 
does God adopt in his discipline of the soul? 
That is the question in hand. 

You and I are worth more to God than we are 
to any one else. That follows from His having 
thought us out and made us. ISTo interest sur- 
passes an owner's interest. "When a soul is, as 
we say, lost, pray who is the loser ? There can 
be but one answer. The loser of a thing is in- 
variably the one who owned and still owns the 
thing lost. Loss does not work forfeiture. Who 

26 



26 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

was it that went after the one lost sheep ? Was 
it not the sheep's owner ? "Who was it that swept 
the house diligently until her lost piece of money 
was recovered ? Was it not the woman to whom 
the coin belonged ? Who was it that went out 
to meet the lost son, when he was yet a great way 
oflf ? Was it not the man who alone of all men 
had the right to say of him, " This my son, was 
dead and is alive again, was lost and is found " ? 
Yes, the soul belongs to God, belongs to Him be- 
cause He is the author and fashioner of the soul. 
The methods of the soul's discipline, therefore, 
are God's methods. 

Let us ponder them. And first consider the 
material with which God has to deal in disciplin- 
ing the soul. The effects which an artificer 
brings to pass can only be fairly judged when 
we take into account the medium in which he 
works, through which he endeavors to express 
his thoughts. It would be unreasonable to com- 
plain of a sculptor because of his failing to secure 
by the blows of his chisel the same results which 
a painter attains by the touch of his brush. The 
one man, we say, does more justice to form, and 
the other more justice to color. Perfection would 
require that justice should be done both to form 
and to color, but the conditions make this impos- 
sible. In the very act of selecting his medium 
the artist confesses his limitations. When God 
determined that out of the dust of the ground 



THE METHODS OF HER DISCIPLINE, 27 

He would make man, He predetermined that the 
^man so to be made should be neither angel nor 
archangel, seraph nor cherub, but just what dust 
and breath of God commingled in due propor- 
tions ought to produce, namely, man ; — and so it 
was that man became a living soul, ready and 
waiting to be disciplined or trained by the same 
power that had called him into existence. Let 
us be careful also what we understand by " dis- 
cipline." Discipline may be taken in a larger or 
in a narrower sense. Sometimes we speak of dis- 
cipline as if it were one and the same thing with 
punishment, and the adjectives which we asso- 
ciate with discipline are apt to be such adjectives 
as "stern," "severe," "rigid." But discipline, 
rightly understood, has a much larger and more 
generous definition than this. Discipline, in its 
best and fullest sense, is teaching, education, train- 
ing. Severity is only incidental to discipline ; it 
is by no means of the essence of the thing. Eecall 
that beautiful passage in the Apocryphal Book 
of the Wisdom of Solomon, in which Wisdom 
is personified. " She goeth about," says the au- 
thor, " seeking such as are worthy of her, show- 
eth herself favorably unto them in the ways, and 
meeteth them in every thought. For the very 
true beginning of her is the desire of discipline 
and the care of discipline is love ; and love is the 
keeping of her laws, and the giving heed unto 
her laws is the assurance of incorruption, and in- 



28 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

corruption maketh us near to God." Here " dis- 
cipline " is evidently meant to be understood in 
the sense of training, education, and that is the 
sense in which we shall understand it to-day. 
What are the methods which God uses in the 
training or education of the soul ? 

He has three books, I answer, on which He 
depends in this anxious and delicate process; 
they are his Picture-book, his Story-book and his 
Dream-book. What we call Nature is God's Pic- 
ture-book. By it He is enabled to reach man's 
soul through the eye. There are a great many 
conflicting notions abroad as to what constitutes 
" natural religion " so-called. I submit that the 
best account of natural religion is that which 
makes it to mean such fractional portion of full 
and complete religion as outward Nature, God's 
picture-book as I have called it, suggests. The 
picture-book unsupplemented by anything more 
is, of course, sadly insuflSicient ; nay, worse than 
that, grossly misleading ; nevertheless, in its place 
and time, it has an inestimable value. Certain of 
the primary religious convictions which make 
man the worshipping, temple-building creature 
he is, owe their awakening ; — I do not say their 
existence, for they exist in persons born blind, 
but owe their awakening to the ministry of Na- 
ture. Think how constantly Nature is appealed 
to in the Psalter as if it were a great treasure- 
house of the raw material of religion. Wonder 



THE METHODS OF HER DISCIPLINE. 29 

and admiration and awe lie at the very roots of 
worship, and there can be no question that the 
soul is schooled in these emotions by what the 
eye beholds in its outlook upon God's universe. 
In the little baby stretching out its tiny arms 
toward some bright object near or far, star or 
toy, we discern the rudiments of worship, the 
soul reaching up and out toward the best it sees. 
Gradually, to be sure, the soul learns the positive, 
comparative and superlative degrees ; and man- 
hood relegates to a very insignificant place in its 
regard the thing which was childhood's best ; 
but the principle is unchanged, since for the soul 
to concentrate all her affections and desires in 
reaching out after the best is worship, and the 
whole aim of revelation is to effect a substitution 
of the true image for the false, to transfer adora- 
tion from the pictures in the picture-book to Him 
who meant the picture-book simply to be one of 
His instruments or media in the discipline of the 
soul. 

All along through the Old Testament we find 
a sharp line of demarcation drawn between those 
who idolize Nature and those who stoutly refuse 
to do so, but nowhere is there any disposition to 
treat Nature with contempt. Nature in the 
Psalms is everywhere the minister of reverence 
and holy fear, — " When I consider Thy heavens, 
the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars 
which Thou hast ordained, what is man that Thou 



30 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL, 

art mindful of him or the Son of Man that Thou 
visitest him ? " — that is the tone of psalmist after 
psalmist. There is, you notice, no disposition 
whatsoever betrayed, to deify the powers of 
Nature, as the heathen round about Israel were 
continually doing, but there is manifested an in- 
tense interest in Nature herself as a witness to 
the greatness and the majesty of Nature's Lord. 

Or take such a Psalm as the one hundred and 
fourth, with its panoramic view of Nature as a 
whole, — what a marvelous composition it is, and 
how completely theistic from first to last ! It 
begins by picturing God as clothed with " majesty 
and honor " and then goes on to describe in detail 
what we may call the embroidery of this royal 
robe. Figure follows figure in swift succession. 
We are shown cloud-chariots swept along on the 
winds of the wind, we see the ocean with its in- 
numerable tenantry, w^e see the springs of water 
trickling down the mountain sides, the wild 
beasts prowling about, and the fowls of the air 
flying to and from their nests ; — but everywhere, 
whatever may be going on, we are reminded that 
God is there, the animating power back of the 
whole scene ; The cedars of Libanus are " trees 
of the Lord," the lions roaring after their prey 
" do seek their meat from God." 

" O Lord," exclaims this greatest of the ancient 
naturalists ; awe-struck by what he sees, " O Lord, 
how manifold are thy works, in wisdom hast 



THE METHODS OF HEB DISCIPLINE. 31 

Thou made them all, the Earth is full of thy 
riches." 

But the appeal to the Picture-book of Nature 
is not confined to the Old Testament. God's dis- 
ciplinary employment of the things of the outer 
world in his training of the soul is as manifest in 
the Gospels as in the Psalms even though in the 
later scriptures it takes on a different form. 
Our Lord Jesus Christ is continually referring us 
to Nature for illustrations of the spiritual truth 
He is endeavoring to enforce. Would He con- 
vince us that the life is more than meat ? it is 
" Consider the ravens." Would He convince us 
that the body is more than raiment, it is " Con- 
sider the lilies." The tree sprung from the mus- 
tard-seed with its branches full of birds, the field 
of wheat and tares, the vine trellissed about the 
window of the upper-room, — these are all of 
them familiar instances of Christ's appeal to 
Nature, as a fellow witness with himself to the 
great truths which it behooves the soul of man 
to know. We make a grave mistake when we 
let any alarmist cry frighten us away from the 
proper and legitimate helps which Nature has it 
in her power to give us in our search for God. If 
we start out resolved to look no further than 
Nature in that search, we shall indeed come to 
grief, and very serious grief ; but if we turn to 
Nature only for such ministry as she has been 
empowered to render, knowing all the while that 



32 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

it is a ministry partial and imperfect, we shall 
get nothing but good from her discipline. If she 
teach us nothing else than to love beauty and to 
reverence the principle of law she will have laid 
us under no slender obligation, for the love of 
beauty is the key to worship, and reverence for 
the principle of law is the stepping-stone to 
righteousness and true holiness. So much for 
the Picture-book, "What now of the Story-book ? 

By the Story-book I mean the record and 
chronicle of what has happened on the surface of 
this earth of ours since life, and more especially 
human life began to run its course here. Of by 
far the greater number of the events that have 
happened the memory has perished utterly ; but 
the tradition of some of them survives. These 
surviving memories taken together constitute 
what we know as history, the history of the 
past ; and one of God's methods of disciplining 
the soul is the bringing to bear on her life these 
powers of the past, these still active energies of 
what a poet has called " buried time." 

Consider attentively, for a moment, your own 
life, recall your soul's experience thus far, and 
judge for yourself as to the extent to which what 
has been told you about the past has influenced 
and moulded you. Think of the tremendous 
power that usage and habit and custom have ex- 
ercised over you. The whole configuration of 
life, as you view it to-day, is utterly different from 



THE METHODS OF HER DISCIPLINE, 33 

what it would have been had no standards of con- 
duct, no precedents, no examples existed to guide 
you to right choices. 

But the moment you begin taking account of 
such things as usage and habit and custom and 
example and precedent, that moment you touch 
history. Save for the record, the chronicle, the 
tradition, these inheritances of a vanished past 
never would have come down to you ; you would 
have had to start fresh and unequipped, slowly 
and painfully discovering for yourself a few, (for 
it could have been only a few) of the treasures 
of wisdom and knowledge which the existence 
of history in the world has made available 
for you at once. We have seen how keenly the 
Psalmist appreciated the value of what we agreed 
to call the picture-book, let us now see what a 
very high estimate he set upon the story-book. 

Take, for instance, that long psalm Attendite 
papule^ appointed in the Prayer Book Psalter 
for the fifteenth evening of the month, — What 
is the engrossing subject of its many verses ? It 
is wholly and only Jehovah's goodness to his peo- 
ple through all the long reaches of the past. " I 
propose," the psalmist declares, " to report such 
things as the fathers have told. They ought not 
be hidden from the children of the generations 
to come." He accounts it, he says, his plain duty 
to show the honor of the Lord " his mighty and 
wonderful works that He has done." Accord- 



34 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

ingly, starting from Jacob, he proceeds to narrate 
in a most vi^id and exhilarating fashion, the great 
things that were done for the Hebrew people 
during their passage from the land of bondage to 
the land of promise. He reminds them of the 
marvellous things God did for their fathers in the 
land of Egypt ; in the field of Zoan ; He divided 
the sea, He led them with a light of fire. He 
clave the hard rocks and gave them drink thereof, 
He commanded the clouds above, He opened the 
doors of heaven, He rained down manna upon 
them for to eat; and gave them food from 
heaven ; — and so he goes on until the story cul- 
minates in the choice of David and the building 
of the temple. 

What a splendid incentive to patriotism in such 
a psalm as that ? How the hearts of the listen- 
ing young people of that day must have throbbed 
and leaped within them as they hung upon the 
lips of the minstrel singing the story of that 
marvellous rescue and still more marvellous pil- 
grimage. He sang as he did, he told them, in 
order that their posterity might know these 
things, and the children which were yet unborn, 
to the intent that when they came up they might 
show their children the same ; that they might 
put their trust in God and not forget the works 
of God, but keep His commandments. 

That was what history meant to the Israelites. 
It was not merely a memory, it was a stimulating 



TEE METHODS OF HEB DISCIPLINE. 35 

memory. It was not a mere dry record of facts, 
it was an inspiration and a song. Because God 
had done great things for their fathers they be- 
lieved that He could and would do great things 
for them. ISTay, they went further and held that 
God was actually bound by the most sacred of 
all ties, the obligation of a solemn promise, to 
stand by them. Their appeal was virtually that 
which we perpetuate in the Litany. " O God, 
we have heard with our ears and our fathers have 
declared unto us, the noble works that Thou didst 
in their days and in the old time before them " ; 
a reminder upon which follows, as logically as a 
conclusion from a premise, the urgent petitionary 
cry, — " O Lord, arise, help us and deliver us, for 
thine honor." He can scarcely be an honorable 
God, so the implication runs, if He disowns or 
shuts his eyes upon so memorable a past. 

If the history of God's dealings with a single 
race could exercise over that race such controll- 
ing sway, it would seem as if we Christians ought 
to be able to draw from our further reaching 
past, stimulus and instruction more abundant 
still. Their story-book, fascinating as it was, 
could not compare with ours. They could look 
back through the generations to no greater de- 
liverer than Moses ; we look back to the incar- 
nate Son of God, and in the act of looking back 
to Him we look across all the momentous results 
that have followed upon His coming. The chap- 



36 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

ters of their book dealt mostly with wars and 
migrations and captivities, ours include such 
mystic events as a Nativity and a Baptism, a 
Temptation in a "Wilderness and a Transfigura- 
tion on a Mount, an Agony in a Garden and a 
Passion on a Cross, a precious Death and Burial, 
a mighty Eesurrection and a glorious Ascension, 
— these and all that has followed upon these. 
Surely we must fain acknowledge that history 
has its place among the methods of the soul's 
discipline. 

I spoke of a third book as being instrumental 
in God's hands to this same end, — his Dream 
Book. Over and above the pictures of ISTature 
and the lessons of History, we are bound to take 
account of that gift of inner and spiritual vision 
known as prophecy. The picture-book, Nature, 
is the book of the present, it lies open all the 
time before our eyes ; the story-book, History, is 
the book of the past, its records cover the gener- 
ations that have gone ; the dream-book. Prophecy, 
is the book of the future. From time to time 
God has sent into the world the messengers whom 
we know as seers. To them it has been given to 
see further into things than for the rest of us is 
possible ; not only so but there has been granted 
also a prevision of the future. They have dreamed 
dreams and seen visions and because of their 
visions and their dreams their brother men have 
been kept from losing heart, have plucked up 



THE METHODS OF HEB DISCIPLINE. 37 

courage and been brave to live. Man must have 
hope if he is to keep on struggling. And these 
prophets have been the ministers of hope. 

The prophet is like the man who paces to and 
fro on the forward deck of a ship keeping a sharp 
lookout. On his ability and his fidelity the 
safety of the whole ship's company depends. 
He must have an eye keen to pierce the mist, an 
ear quick to catch the sound of breakers. Yes, 
we need the prophet and because we need him 
God sends him. 

There have been many, many prophets since 
the world began. The names of some of them 
have been preserved to us but the names of the 
most of them are forgotten. Of the prophets 
referred to in Holy Scriptures, both Hebrew and 
Christian, only a few are, as we say, personally 
known to us ; as to the rest all we know is that 
they lived and prophesied. Nor are we to sup- 
pose that the ministry of prophecy has been con- 
fined to the Hebrew race, though it has been so 
much more profusely lavished on that race than 
on any other. Enoch, seventh from Adam, 
prophesied, we are told, and that was long be- 
fore there was any Hebrew race in existence. 
Moreover, if we are to accept the sign of the 
prophet Jonah we may well believe that other 
heathen peoples, besides the Mnevites, received 
from Him who inspires prophecy intimations of 
judgment to come. Balaam, great prophet that 



38 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

we have to acknowledge Mm, was no Hebrew, 
yet he foresaw Christ and His Kingdom. 

Yes, even though we must needs acknowledge 
that the lessons of Nature and the lessons of 
history have been made more widely and more 
generally useful in the education of man than 
the lessons of prophecy, we must still admit that 
prophecy holds a most important place, and that 
no full account can be given of the methods God 
uses in his discipline of the soul if prophecy is 
overlooked. 

The God we Christians worship is the God 
" which was, which is, and which is to come," and 
what else should we expect of Him in his train- 
ing of us than that He should make past, present 
and future all three of them tributary to his 
purpose of perfecting the soul. 

Doubtless you will have noticed that through- 
out what I have been saying no attention what- 
ever has been given to disturbing and conflicting 
forces in this matter of God's discipline of man. 
The assumption has been all along that the 
School was a J^ormal School in which all things 
were rightly ordered and the whole plan duly 
carried out. This has not been because of any 
forgetfulness of the part that temptations and 
sin play in the earthly experience of the soul, but 
simply with a view to that gain in clearness 
which comes of dealing with one subject at a 
time. How evil and sorrow cut across the path 



THE METHODS OF HER DISCIPLINE. 39 

of smooth advance, how they break in upon the 
divine plan and mar its symmetry we shall dis- 
cover in due time. Meanwhile remember these 
three classics of the soul, the Picture-book, the 
Story-book, and the Dream-book. Well and thor- 
oughly to have learned the lessons they can 
teach, will win enrollment for you, in that 
fourth and greatest book of all God's Book of 
Eemembrance. 



III. 

THE ENEMIES OF HER PEACE. 



III. 

THE EISTEMIES OF HER PEACE. 

The enemies of the soul's peace are three, — 
pride, anger and desire. One of these hostile 
forces delivers a front attack, the other two are 
continually plotting stealthy approaches on either 
flank. If we would thoroughly understand the 
strategic situation, and carry on our part of the 
fight intelligently we must keep these cardinal 
points from which danger threatens continually 
in sight. Chance may seem to be the arbiter of 
victory, but it is not really so. In the long run 
it is vigilance that conquers. Let us then make 
a study of our allied adversaries, pride, anger 
and desire, considering how and why it is that 
they should so menace our peace. 

You say that what surprises you about this 
reconnoissance of the enemy's position is not that 
it discloses three points of attack, but rather that 
it should disclose so few as three. 

You have been accustomed to think of the 
enemies of the soul's peace as far more numerous 
than that. "My name," said the quick-witted 
Spirit who ventured to adjure Jesus not to tor- 
ment him, "My name is Legion; for we are 

43 



44 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

many," and even so you have been accustomed 
to think of the soul's enemies as being many 
rather than few. Doubtless such is the fact, but 
when we have multitudes to deal with there is a 
certain advantage in classifying the material 
which goes to make them up, ranking and grad- 
ing their contents for convenience in reckoning, 
and I am convinced that before we shall have 
done, this morning, with pride, anger and desire, 
it will have become clear to us that this analysis 
of the forces hostile to our peace is a sufficiently 
searching one. An army, we must remember, 
may be made up of many divisions, may have its 
regiments and battalions and companies, and yet 
be all the while one army. And so with these 
attacking forces that war against the soul, our 
counting them only three in no way diminishes 
the multifariousness of the evil for which they 
stand, the sin they represent. 

Take pride as our first instance. Pride is no 
sooner mentioned in the Litany, you remember, 
than two affiliated sins follow close upon its 
heels, — vainglory and hypocrisy. These are the 
congeners and blood-relatives of pride, and there 
is no reason in the world why we should set them 
off by themselves as separate and independent 
entities. 

Pride is a disturber of the soul's peace because 
it introduces into our inner life an element of 
falsehood; and peace and falsehood are two 



THE ENEMIES OF HER PEACE. 45 

things that cannot live together. " Peace through 
the truth " is a wise maxim, no other kind of 
peace has promise of permanence. 

The falsehood in pride lies just here. We 
form an estimate of ourselves and our intrinsic 
worth, our own positive merit and deserving, 
our own talent or ability, which estimate, when 
tested impartially by a competent judge, is seen 
to be a wholly erroneous one, erroneous because 
exaggerated ; and yet so self -deceived are we 
that this imagined measure of ourselves and of 
the credit due us, is accepted in the court-room of 
our own consciousness, and, what is worse, acted 
upon in the open spaces of our outer life as if it 
were absolutely correct. Occasionally, more 
often in some lives than in others, circumstances 
force upon a man a momentary insight into 
things as they really are ; he sees by flash-light 
the true interior situation, and then, as we say, 
his pride is " wounded." A blessed sort of injury 
that. How grateful we ought to be for such dis- 
closures. " Faithful are the wounds of a friend." 
What we call vanity is simply pride busying it- 
self with little things ;— clothes, bric-a-brac, up- 
holstery, good looks, accomplishments. Vain 
people are sometimes lovable in spite of their 
vanity, for the simple reason that having allowed 
their pride to spend itself upon trifles, they still 
retain back of their vanity a certain reserve fund 
of unselfishness which makes them still worth 



46 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

loving, whereas, one who is all pride away back 
to the very centre of his being, has squeezed out 
of his nature whatever there was there that de- 
served to be loved. And when you get back to 
where the heart should be there is none. 

But what, under this showing, becomes, you 
ask me, of that well-known virtue "proper 
pride," and what becomes of that admirable 
quality a " just pride " ? These, I answer, are 
careless expressions, pardonable enough when 
used colloquially, but incapable of standing the 
fire of criticism for a moment. If pride be what 
we have agreed to consider it an exaggerated 
conceit of one's own value or importance, how 
can it ever be " proper," or how can it possibly 
be " just ? " For " proper pride " read self-respect, 
which is a very different matter, and for "just 
pride " read a fair, well-warranted satisfaction, 
and we shall be nearer the mark. The very fact 
that people when they are justifying pride, or 
trying to justify it, speak of a "pardonable 
pride " betrays a lurking misgiving that pride is 
something which under any and all circumstances 
calls for forgiveness. Yes, pride is a sin, and 
the prolific parent of sins, and if we would find 
peace at the last we may as well begin by down- 
ing pride at the first. 

But how shall we go to work to down pride ? 
It is easy enough to say that the remedy for 
pride lies in the practice of humility — but that 



THE ENEMIES OF EEB PEACE. 47 

does not help us very much. We cannot take 
virtue by doses. The physician of the soul 
who can think of nothing better than to pre- 
scribe as a cure for a particular vice a pill or 
potion of the contrary virtue is unworthy of 
his calling. The merest apprentice in spiritual 
therapeutics ought to know better than that. 
Pride is one of those painless ailments which 
are all the more dangerous because unrecog- 
nized and unacknowledged by the patient. The 
great point, in such instances, is to get the 
man's eyes open to the fact that he needs treat- 
ment, for unless he can be persuaded actively to 
cooperate in his own case, things are all up with 
him. The only instrumentality that can bring 
about in man or woman the final excision of 
pride, is the presentation in some unmistakable 
way of a personality which by force of contrast 
shames self into a sense of its own utter worth- 
lessness and insignificance. Paul told his Corin- 
thians a home truth, which must have done them 
a world of good, when he said of some of them 
who had been particularly vainglorious that 
" they measuring themselves by themselves and 
comparing themselves among themselves" had 
been the opposite of wise. But if it be provincial 
for people to confine themselves to a small circle 
of comparison, as these people had been doing at 
Corinth, how much worse than provincial must 
it be still further to narrow down the circle until 



48 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

it holds only one's self and that other self who 
always sits confronting one's first self in the 
mystic mirror of the consciousness. That whole- 
some shaming process which I have spoken of as 
the only cure for pride takes its most effective 
beginning when the soul can be persuaded to 
open her eyes upon the Lamb of God, the alone 
sinless Christ. 

Nowhere in the Gospels does Simon Peter ap- 
pear to so great advantage as when, falling down 
at Jesus' knees, there on the sand-beach of the 
lake, he cries out in startled contrition " Depart 
from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord." There 
had suddenly swum into the field of that dis- 
ciple's vision the image of what spiritual perfec- 
tion really meant. He seemed to see the abso- 
lute goodness incarnated there before his eyes, 
and, for the moment, the whole fabric of his 
pride shrivelled and vanished like dry leaves in 
the flame. Between that faultless One and him- 
self he could discern nothing in common, and 
though the thought of separation pierced him 
with anguish, separation, he said to himself, it 
must be. 

The self-centred man is in the same false posi- 
tion with the self-centred earth of the old as- 
tronomy. "It is obvious," they used to say, 
" that the sun goes around the earth, for we see 
it set in the West and rise the next morning in 
the East." This seemed conclusive and it was 



THE ENEMIES OF HER PEACE. 49 

not an easy thing to shake mankind out of so 
plausible a belief. But Christ accomplishes a 
greater marvel still when He persuades a soul 
that itself is not the centre it has fondly supposed 
itself to be, and that humble dependence not 
proud independence is the law for man. 

Another enemy of the soul's peace is anger, 
which like pride counts in its retinue many at- 
tendant sins. There is to be sure one form of 
anger that is blameless. The anger aroused at 
the sight of cruelty or injustice or any unlawful 
use of power, especially if we are sure that no 
element of self-interest enters into the case, such 
anger is not only not a blameworthy, it is a posi- 
tively praiseworthy state of feeling. To be too 
cowardly or too lethargic to be able to feel right- 
eous indignation is no credit to man or woman. 
"Be ye angry," is an apostolic commandment, 
which, the proviso, " and sin not," by no means, re- 
peals. Anger in this sense is what an old English 
theologian calls it, " one of the sinews of the soul." 

But anger as commonly understood, commonly 
felt and commonly exhibited is quite another af- 
fair. Anger is the feeling which takes possession 
of us Avhen things do not go as we wish them to 
go, when we are thwarted and opposed, when we 
are ridiculed or belittled, when we are cheated of 
credit which we think belongs to us, or charged 
with motives which we are conscious of never 
having entertained, then it is that anger, for the 



50 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

moment, fevers the reason and by fevering the 
reason imperils the steadiness of the will. Hu- 
man nature is, perhaps, best represented under 
the similitude of a realm or kingdom, at the 
heart and centre of which, stands a throne. The 
monarch, the occupant of this throne is the will. 
So long as the will holds its proper sovereignty 
and governs prudently with all its power the 
whole realm is in peace. But once dethrone the 
will and anarchy is upon you in the twinkling of 
an eye. Eeason is the prime-minister who helps 
the king to rule as he ought. " By me," says the 
Wisdom of the Proverbs (which is but a synonym 
for the reason) by me kings rule and princes de. 
cree justice. By me princes rule and nobles, 
even all the judges of the earth." Whatever, 
therefore, perverts reason, even for ever so brief 
a time, imperils the throne and threatens an- 
archy. Now, this is precisely what anger does. 
For the moment, it perverts reason. The old 
moralists used to call anger a short madness. 
That is a strong way of stating it, but it is 
scarcely too strong. Shakespeare likens it to in- 
toxication. The two definitions agree in locating 
the mischief which anger does. They both of 
them charge anger with impairing the integrity 
of the reason. The angry man is notoriously 
the unreasonable man, that is the very thing we 
say of him, " he will not listen to reason." 

What now shall we say as to the antidote? 



THE ENEMIES OF HER PEACE, 51 

We discovered a cure for pride. Is there a cure 
for anger? Yes, and it is to be found in the 
very same way in which we found the other 
remedy, that is to say, by looking Christward. 
Simon Peter, the impetuous, was our teacher in 
the former instance, let us turn to him again, let 
him teach us now ; for there can be no higher 
authority on hasty temper than he. This is what 
he says, " Christ also suffered for us," leaving us 
an example that ye should follow his steps : " who 
did no sin neither was pride found in his mouth ; 
who, when He was reviled reviled not again, 
when He suffered He threatened not, but commit- 
ted Himself to Him that judgeth righteously." 
Committed Himself to Him that judgeth right- 
eously, — yes, that is it ; that is the key to the 
conquest of anger. St. Paul has the same 
thought though he words it differently. "He 
that judgeth me is the Lord." What we want to 
do in the struggle with anger is to gain time, for 
if we can only gain time the day is saved. This 
device of appealing the case instantly to a higher 
tribunal covers the ground completely. Of 
course the resort is one that is only open to 
Christians, for it is only they who believe in the 
reality of a heavenly tribunal and the certainty 
of a judgment to come. But I am speaking to 
Christian believers. It is scarcely to be expected 
that any others will stray into a church of a 
week day in Lent, — I am speaking to Christian 



52 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

believers, and I have a right to expect that the 
appeal to Christ's example and to his apostles' 
teaching will weigh with them. That example 
was gentleness. That precept is forbearance. 
In many cases in which we permit ourselves to 
get angry we are in the wrong, and instead of 
being under an obligation to forgive are really in 
sore need of being forgiven. And even in those 
cases where we are technically in the right of the 
quarrel, or the misunderstanding, our answer to 
God's question " Dost thou well to be angry ? " 
is a very lame one. 

Except in the character of disinterested specta- 
tors we never do well to be angry. " No man," 
says the legal maxim, " can be a judge in his own 
cause." In every controversy, therefore, where 
our own selfhood comes in to mix the issue, the 
only safety is to stand by Paul's ground that 
vengeance belongeth unto God, and that for the 
Christian the law of retaliation has been left far 
behind. Let the brute keep up the eye for an eye 
and a tooth for a tooth morality. The children 
of God have been called up on to higher ground ; 
they have caught their Master's word " forgive " ; 
"if their enemy hungers they feed him," if he 
thirsts they '^give him drink." I do not allege 
that this is the Christian practice, for to say so 
would be an emptj^ boast. I do say that it is 
the Christian doctrine and the only Christian 
doctrine. Diversities of interpretation there are 



THE ENEMIES OF EEB PEACE. 53 

in the Church many and grave, but upon this 
point there is unanimity perfect and entire. 

There is one other enemy of the soul's peace ; 
namely, desire. This is by far the most loud- 
mouthed of the three attacking armies, for de- 
sire is nothing if not clamorous. We cannot re- 
pudiate desire and turn our backs on it alto- 
gether, condemning it out and out, for desire is 
human. ISTothing that forms part of the original 
equipment of human nature, the starting capital 
of man can be in itself bad, and so far as we can 
see, utterly to kill desire would mean the perma- 
nent maiming and mutilation of the soul. It is 
unfallen, not fallen man, who is represented in 
the primitive paradise as discerning in the fruit 
of the tree of knowledge something to be " de- 
sired." Desire, therefore, cannot, according to 
the Biblical theology, be pronounced intrinsically 
and necessarily evil. To quit our military figure 
and to go back to our parable of the realm, the 
kingdom, the throne room, what we have really 
to be anxious about is the relation of desire to the 
regal power in us, the will. Desire is, from its 
very nature, so persistent, so persuasive, so im- 
portunate, that it is continually tending to ac- 
quire, not merely influence with the will, which 
would be all right enough, not merely legitimate 
influence, but that leading and prevalent influence 
which belongs to reason and to reason only. 

We have seen that pride deceives the will, and 



64 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF TEE SOUL. 

that anger fevers the will, let us be frank and con- 
fess that desire too often cajoles and over-persuades 
the will, in the face of better advice from the will's 
true counsellor the conscience, for conscience is 
but another name for reason acting in the moral 
and spiritual field. 

But again, you ask me what of the remedy ? 
How are we to curb desire ? How are we to get 
the upper hand of " these rebellious wishes " ? 

There would seem to be only one way, and that 
is to cultivate such profound reverence for the will 
of God as such, that the simple knowledge that 
any desire of the heart is tempting and alluring 
us to overpass the boundary of what is righteous, 
the limit of what is holy, suffices to give us pause. 
St. Paul in what he says to the Ephesians, classi- 
fies desire under two heads, " the desires of the 
flesh and of the mind" is his phrase. The 
Church, in her baptismal ofiice, summarizes the 
matter a little differently ; she speaks of covetous 
desires after the vain pomp and glory of the 
world, and of the sinful desires of the flesh. It 
does not so very much matter how we analyze 
and classify, upon the main point we are all 
agreed. We all know that desire is a tremen- 
dously potent influence in the daily life of the soul, 
and that there can be no such thing as " peace 
within " until we learn the secret of saying to 
those proud waves, "Be still." The ascetic theo- 
logians have their theory of the matter. Writers 



TBE ENEMIES OF HER PEACE. 55 

like Thomas a Kempis seem to think that it is 
both possible and praiseworthy actually to kill 
out, to excise, to annihilate the heart's desires. 
I cannot believe that it is God's wish that we 
should so deal with the heart which He has 
planted in us. I do not find in the l^ew Testa- 
ment any teaching which indicates that desire is to 
be conquered to the point of extermination. I do 
find much which tells me that an overmastering 
desire for things which it has not pleased God to 
give us, whether in the line of enjoyment, or in- 
fluence, or possession, is utterly and hopelessly at 
variance with the soul's peace. 

Let us try to look at our lives soberly and 
seriously from God's point of view, try to dis- 
cern, as accurately as may be, the law of propor- 
tion which applies to them, try to discover just 
what it is that He is expecting of us in the way 
of activity and just what it is that He is expect- 
ing of us in the way of repression and self-efface- 
ment. The lines of configuration are not the 
same for all lives, they run as variously as the 
lines in one's hand and the palmistry by which 
we determine their signification is prayer. Ask 
God to show you personally, individually, what 
his plan for you is like, and then out of an honest 
heart you can breathe the further supplication 
that He will enable you not only to desire that 
which He doth promise but also to love that 
which He doth command. 



TV. 

THE SOKEOWS OF HER PILGEIMAGE. 



IV. 

THE SOEEOWS OF HEE PILGEIMAGE. 

Theee are three standard and classical figures 
of speech under which, in all generations, men 
have been accustomed to depict life, — the school, 
the battle and the journey. 

The soul, that is to say, may be imagined as 
pupil, as combatant or as traveller. Under two 
of these heads, the disciplinary and the militant, 
we have already studied the soul. There remains 
the third, and I have promised that to-day in our 
dealings with the soul we should consider the 
sorrows of her pilgrimage. The subject, so 
worded, has, it must be confessed, a sentimental 
sound, but we will try to steer clear of sentimen- 
talism. 

Nothing is more matter-of-fact than sorrow, 
when it is the real thing. With mimic and im- 
agined sorrows we have no special call to deal. 
It is they that make the sentimentalist's stock in 
trade. The people who easily shed tears over 
the heroes and heroines of written or acted trag- 
edy, while remaining utterly unmoved by the 
troubles and trials of the flesh and blood suf- 
ferers who have a direct claim upon their sym- 

59 



60 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF TBE SOUL. 

pathies, have always been and will always be fair 
game for the satirist. Their tears are about as 
genuine, mean about as much, as the spangled 
waterfall, at the back of the stage, down which 
the hero has cast himself. This is a trumped-up 
and second-hand sorrowfulness which does not 
count. 

To-day we are to consider only such sorrows 
as are real, and even these we must take care to 
approach in a sane and healthy temper. No pos- 
sible good could come of our merely gloating 
over them as morbid phenomena of human life. 
Why probe wounds if one has no intention of 
pouring in the wine and oil of comfort ? Why 
fret and worry the pilgrims with endless talk 
about the dust and heat, if you have no good 
tidings of the twelve palm trees by the well or 
of the great rock shadowing a weary land ? For 
bad Samaritans and blind guides there is no de- 
mand. 

There is one sort of sorrow which all religious 
minds must acknowledge to be wholesome, St. 
Paul calls it " godly," the sorrow for sin. Some 
think that this is the only kind of sorrow in- 
tended in the beatitude " Blessed are they that 
mourn," but this is an extreme opinion. If it 
were true, as some maintain, that any feeling of 
sorrow other than such sorrow as is caused by 
the thought of our own misdoings ought to be ac- 
counted unworthy of a Christian, how could we 



THE SORROWS OF HER PILGRIMAGE. 61 

possibly explain that anguished cry of the sinless 
One, '' O, my Father, let this cup pass from Me " ? 
And yet I think we may very properly acknowl- 
edge that no sort of sorrow so well befits the 
hmnan soul as does the sorrow for sin. Never is 
man in wiser or in better mood than when he 
finds himself ready and eager to say from his 
heart, "I will confess my wickedness and be 
sorry for my sin." It matters not that this sort 
of sorrow is out of fashion. A great many good 
things are always out of fashion for the time 
being. We observe, however, that they have a 
way of coming back into fashion after a while. 
The very people who discarded them gradually 
come to see that they had a certain value pecul- 
iar to themselves and they are brought back. 
Many influences are at work just now that have 
it for their effect to minimize the sinfulness of 
sin. Our enlarged acquaintance with the uni- 
verse and its innumerable worlds by quickening 
our sense of the insignificance of man makes it 
more easy for us to belittle the moral value of 
whatever so slight and inconsiderable a creature 
may do or leave undone. The machinery of Na- 
ture also inclines to fatalism minds that can see 
no further than the wheel- work. " We are but 
tiny portions of the huge frame," they say to 
themselves. " We are the merest victims of cause 
and effect ; the bondmen and bondwomen of a 
despotic force hidden out of our sight, somewhere 



62 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF TEE SOUL. 

back of our lives. "Who has any right to blame 
us for doing what clearly, our natures being such 
as they are, we cannot help doing ? " And so it 
has come about that there seems to be much less 
of that sort of sorrow prevalent which people 
used to call sorrow for sin. It is thought of, 
when thought of at all, as people think of those 
infantile diseases, all liability to which mature 
men and women have outgrown. 

And yet there are found here and there, still 
surviving, and by no means the least attractive 
of their kind, souls with whom sorrow for sin 
seems to be a very real thing. They aflBrm, 
when in a confiding mood, that a certain vision 
of spiritual perfectness, an ideal of what the soul 
ought to be and might be, haunts all their waking 
hours, and they declare that their failure to reach 
this lofty standard, strive as they may, is to them 
a source of continual sorrow. 

They do not deny that the argument of the 
fatalist has an exceedingly plausible look, they 
do not profess to be able to dispose satisfactorily 
of all the difiiculties that it raises. They only 
know that, in spite of everything, the voice of 
conscience succeeds in making itself heard, and 
that, do what they will, the sense of ill-desert, 
the conviction of sin, the longing for peace with 
God, the desire for an effective word of absolu- 
tion abide. 

But this is only one of what the psalmist elo- 



TEE SORROWS OF HER PILGRIMAGE. 63 

quently calls the multitude of sorrows. Pain 
and sickness bring sorrow. A pathetic attempt 
is on foot to explain these things away by attrib- 
uting them to the imagination, but with the 
vast majority of sufferers such fine-spun reason- 
ing avails nothing, they insist on continuing to 
believe as the bulk of men have ever believed 
from the beginning that pain and sickness are 
very real things indeed, actual burdens grievous 
to be borne ; an evil that calls loudly for redress. 

The great typical and exemplary sufferers of 
Holy Scripture, Job, Jeremiah, St. Paul, never 
try to comfort themselves with the thought that 
the blows and bruises under which they stagger 
are imagined. " I will speak in the anguish of 
my spirit," cries one of these men, " I will com- 
plain in the bitterness of my soul." 

" My strength and my hope," exclaims another 
of them, " is perished from the Lord : remember- 
ing my affliction and my misery, the wormwood 
and the gall." "In afflictions, in necessities, in 
distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, 
in labors, in watchings," — such is the language 
of a third. 

Men who talk in this way are not seeking to 
persuade us that pain is a figment of the imagi- 
nation ; on the contrary, they are all full of the 
thought that the experience through which they 
have had to pass has been a fearful, a terrible, a 
heart-rending thing. Whether God's hand has 



64 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

been behind it or the adversary's malice they 
may not be able to determine ; the one thing they 
feel perfectly sure of is that they have suffered. 

There are other sorrows besides those caused 
by bodily pain and anguish. Reverses of fortune 
bring sorrow. A man just past middle life sees 
the results of the patient labor of all his best 
years swept away as by a flood ; a woman learns, 
of a sudden, that through some bad investment 
or some flagrant breach of trust the modest com- 
petency upon which she has been relying for the 
support of her old age has been swallowed up as 
in a quick-sand. These things break the courage 
of the bravest. It is such sights that sadden the 
heart of Ecclesiastes, and make him the cynic 
that he is, chanting his bitter refrain of the " evil 
done under the sun." 

Again, thwarted ambitions bring sorrow. 
Men are carried along by the mysterious sorcery 
of illusion, fancying for a good half of the pil- 
grimage, that some wonderfully fortunate thing 
is in store for them just around the next corner, 
when all of a sudden they wake to the fact that 
their hope is a blighted hope. It is the other 
man who has secured the coveted office, the other 
man who has achieved the reputation. "The 
many fail, the one succeeds," — a mournful maxim, 
a statement which we should be glad to reverse 
if we might, but unhappily the truth, the hard, 
disagreeable, repellant, inevitable fact. 



THE SORROWS OF HER PILGRIMAGE, 65 

Again, there are inherited memories that are 
full of sorrow, transmitted burdens of the past, 
which some have to accept as their companions 
from the beginning of the pilgrimage to the end 
of it. "Many an inherited sorrow," says a great 
prose writer of our day. " Many an inherited 
sorrow that has maimed a life has been breathed 
into no human ear." Yes, — how true that is. 
We see the maimed life; we note the halting 
achievement; and we wonder why so much 
talent, nay, so much genius, perhaps, should have 
so slight a yield to show, when all the while the 
real secret of our disappointment at our friend's 
poor showing ought really to be looked for in a pre- 
vious generation. The man started with a burden 
from which he has never been able to shake him- 
self free. The soul, it may be, was a brave 
enough soul, as souls go, but the handicap of de- 
pressing, disheartening memories was too heavy, 
and so what ought to have been best lapsed into 
second-best. We are disappointed, — but what is 
our disappointment compared with his ? 

Again, there is the sorrow of personal bereave- 
ment and domestic loss. So engrossing and ex- 
acting is this form of sorrow that we almost feel 
as if the very word sorrow had been misapplied 
when we hear it used to signify any other form 
of distress. When it is said of any one, without 
further explanation that he or she is " in sorrow," 
we invariably draw the inference that the sorrow 



66 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

has been occasioned by death. And yet of the 
" five sorrowful mysteries " which the devotional 
writers reckon up, death counts as only one. 
There is a worse grief than that of watching the 
departure out of this life of those we love, and 
that is their departure out of the way of truth, 
the way of righteousness, the way of peace. Less 
hard for Jesus was the sight of Lazarus dead 
than the sight of Judas coming to greet Him with 
a kiss, or the sight of Peter protesting in the 
servant's hall " I do not know the man." 

It is time that we turn to consider the remedy 
for sorrow. There are some who maintain that 
any such enquiry is superfluous. Sorrow, they 
insist, ought not to be temporized with, for a 
moment, but simply and stoutly prohibited. Why 
should Christians sorrow ? Sin, the only thing that 
properly calls for sorrow, they have cast behind 
them, and to sorrow for anything else is rank 
treason against Christ our King, who said to his 
disciples "Rejoice and be exceeding glad;" as 
well as contemptuous towards the Apostle who 
exhorts " In everything give thanks." Undoubt- 
edly there is a certain amount of truth in this 
extreme position. For the soul to allow herself 
to be overmastered by sorrow and permanently 
possessed of it, is assuredly unchristian. And 
yet we cannot forget that the same voice which 
said " Rejoice and be exceeding glad," said also 
"My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto 



THE SORROWS OF HER PILGRIMAGE. 67 

death," and that the same apostle who was so 
eager that the true believers should in every- 
thing give thanks, confessed to having felt deeply 
cast down when " left at Athens alone." 

The simple fact is that it is unnatural to 
smother sorrow on the instant it is born, and it 
is unchristian so to nurse and tend it that it be- 
comes the lifelong companion of our pilgrimage. 
A crowned sorrow and a petted sorrow are two 
very different things. The first duty of sorrow 
is to find its way to some mount of transfigura- 
tion that it may be ennobled there. Sorrow's 
next duty is to come back again to the plain 
where the halt and the maimed, the sick, the deaf, 
the blind and the devil-possessed are living, to 
see what can be done by sympathy and by ef- 
fort to lessen the world's great aggregate of woe. 

The only sure and permanent remedy for sor- 
row, whether in its acute or its chronic form, 
whether manifested as sudden and sharp anguish 
or as rooted melancholy, the only remedy for 
sorrow is to become firmly persuaded of the love 
of God. All other alleged specifics for the cure 
of this malady of the soul are mere nostrums. 
With superficial natures they may work what 
look like miraculous results. But of wounds that 
have no scars it is tolerably safe to conclude that 
they were not very deep to start with. 

Once persuaded of the love of God, and so 
firmly persuaded that nothing can shake our 



68 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

faith, sorrow and suffering are accepted — not in- 
deed without much wonder and amazement on 
our part that such things should be, but with that 
sort of acquiescence and patient tolerance which 
we exercise toward any puzzle or enigma which 
we know is to be, in due time, explained. Na- 
ture abounds in phenomena that give the student 
of her mysteries pause. In many points it is evi- 
dent that God has been educating man by a proc- 
ess of illusion, and that, the amiable poet to the 
contrary notwithstanding, " things are not what 
they seem." There is very much in the scheme 
of Nature, as at present understood, which looks 
to be self -contradictory. It is a mistake to sup- 
pose that to the eye of the scientific observer all 
things in the heavens above and in the earth be- 
neath are perfectly harmonized and balanced. 
There are some puzzles left even for the astrono- 
mer and the chemist ; conceptions quite as irrec- 
oncilable by mortal wit as the goodness of God 
and the sorrows of men. But the man of science 
does not despair of finally discovering the real 
harmony which, as he is convinced, lies back of 
the apparent discords which thus far he has been 
enabled to compose. Neither, then, ought the 
soul to despair of finding that reconcilement be- 
tween the love of God and those facts of human 
life which seem to make dead against belief in 
there being any love of God at all. 
I hope I make this point clear, for, really, it 



THE SORROWS OF HEB PILGRIMAGE. 69 

is a most important one, and ought to be very 
helpful to any perplexed mind that earnestly 
desires to hold on to faith in the goodness and 
loving-kindness of the Power Vv^hich rules the 
universe. What I am urging is briefly this, that 
if the superiority of the divine intellect to the 
human intellect makes many of the Creator's 
methods seem to the mind of man self-contra- 
dictory which are not really so ; it is only what 
we ought to expect if when we pass from the 
region of thought to the region ot feeling ^ we dis- 
cover that there also are contradictions which it 
baflies the heart's best efforts to understand. 

God in heaven must be just as much our su- 
perior in loving power as He is in thinking 
power. If then some of his w^ays of thinking 
are too diJHBcult for us to attain unto, why should 
not some of the methods of his love, also seem, 
upon the surface, to be utterly and hopelessly at 
variance with the methods which our human, 
and, because human, less powerful hearts would 
prefer ? 

We are no more competent judges of what it is 
possible for God to feel, than we are competent 
judges of what it is possible for God to think. 
The best we can hope for in our study of J^ature 
is that we may get glimpses of his truths and so 
also the best we can hope for in our scrutiny of 
his dealings with the children of men is that we 
may get glimpses of his love. What makes the 



70 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

preciousness of the religion which passes under 
the name of " the Grospel " is just this, that it 
does give us glimpses of the love of God such as 
are nowhere else to be had. It is not pretended, 
certainly not pretended by intelligent believers, 
that in the school of Christ, all difficulties are 
cleared up, all mysteries dispelled, — no, our claim 
is a much more modest one than that. The 
School, we say, is a good one because it teaches 
so effectively the great lesson of patience. The 
pupils are not promised that they shall know 
everything at once. " What I do thou knowest 
not now, but thou shalt know hereafter," is the 
school motto, and the school badge is the cross. 
Thus taught and thus equipped the soul can 
meet her sorrows bravely. Bereavement cannot 
quench her hope, pain cannot paralyze her faith ; 
melancholy cannot blacken her sky. She has 
learned that love is stronger than death. She is 
persuaded that the lifetime of a planet is not too 
long for the working out of a theodicy. 
She trusts Christ when He says to her : 

" the end of sorrow 
Shall be near My throne/' 



V. 

THE SPLENDOE OF HER DESTINY. 



V. 

THE SPLEKDOE OF HEE DESTINY. 

We are to ponder, this morning, the destiny 
of the soul. 

Her origin we have already considered, also 
her schooling, her warfare and her pilgrimage ; 
there remains the question of her final outcome. 
To what does all this manifold and multiform 
experience lead up? What will she do, what 
will she be " in the end thereof " ? 

I beg you not to take destiny in the sense of 
doom or fate, for that is not at all what was in 
my mind when I fastened upon the phrase which 
has given title to our meditation. 

I pray you, for our present purpose, to think 
of destiny simply as that which God in his wise 
providence has destined, arranged beforehand, 
planned in advance for man. St. Paul in one of 
his most precious and comforting sentences speaks 
of the things which God has prepared for those 
who love Him. A devotional writer of the early 
Church caught up the expression, and made it 
the preface to a prayer that can never perish. 
" O God, who hast prepared for those who love 
Thee, such good things as pass man's understand- 

73 



74 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

ing ; Pour into our hearts such love toward Thee 
that we loving Thee above all things may obtain 
thy promises." This thought of a certain blessed 
preparation made for the future good estate of 
man, a happy harbor even now waiting to wel- 
come into its quiet shelter the storm-beaten ship, 
a home already built and furnished, ample and 
stately, a dwelling-place of delight, this is the 
thought I should like to amplify and unfold. 
Upon the negative side of the matter I see no 
need of dwelling. There is a negative side. 
Whenever any gracious hand holds out a gift, it 
is within one's power to refuse it. The giver 
cannot force us to become recipients against our 
will. Foolish we may be in our exercise of the 
rejecting power, churlish, short-sighted, imprudent 
to the very verge of madness, — still the fact re- 
mains that we do have the prerogative of con- 
trary choice. The Gadarenes set a higher value 
on their swine than on the Christ of God; a 
single step carries one across the line which 
makes the hither boundary of that far country 
where God is not. 

But why should we confuse the losses which 
our own self-will brings upon us with the positive 
gains which it is God's will that we secure? 
Why speak of perdition as if it were his work of 
Whom it is written that He willeth not that any 
should perish ? What God does reallj^ will is our 
sanctification not our destruction, our upbuilding 



THE SPLENDOR OF EEB DESTINY. 75 

not our undoing. So then, suppose we under- 
stand by " the soul's destiny " that which God 
plans and purposes for the soul ; in other words 
the best thing that can happen, not the worst. 
With the question of the loss of the soul we are 
not now concerned, nor yet with the question 
Are there few that be saved ? but only with the 
question, What is possible for the soul ? What 
is open to the soul? To what may the soul 
aspire and attain ? 

With a view to finding an answer to this 
question, suppose we open and look into each one 
of the three books, of which I was speaking, the 
other day, as being the three great manuals in 
use in the school of God, Nature, History and 
Prophecy, or, as I called them, the Picture-book, 
the Story-book, and the Dream-book. 

First of all What has Nature to suggest upon 
the subject? Nature suggests better things in 
store for the soul in the far future by showing us 
the many ranges and grades through which life 
upon this planet has already had to pass before 
what we now see around us could be reached. 
The time was when no life of any sort existed 
here. The earth, a huge molten globe, rolled 
around in its orbit, untenanted because un- 
tenantable. After the planet's crust had so far 
cooled as to show the sea and the dry land, God 
began planting the seeds of life. The secret of 
that process has never been discovered. Guesses 



76 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF TEE SOUL. 

and conjectures we have in plenty but of certain 
knowledge nothing. The only point which 
stands out clearly is the point of which the 
author of the first chapter of Genesis makes so 
much, namely, the gradualness of the Creator's 
method. First, we have life of a low type in full 
possession, then, there supervenes life of a higher 
type, then, life of a type higher still, and at last, 
after a long, long, waiting, — man. Mixed up 
with this whole business there are, of course, 
questions innumerable which have furnished and 
which will long continue to furnish material for 
hot debate. Upon these controverted points I 
have no intention of dwelling, for there is no 
slightest need of our doing so. I simply em- 
phasize the fact now universally acknowledged to 
be the fact, that life upon the globe has thus far 
been an affair of grades and levels, and that man 
is here late-born, many of the types that antici- 
pated his type having disappeared and many 
others being now in process of disappearing. 
"What would seem to be the natural inference 
from all this? The natural inference would 
seem to be, especially when we take into account 
the comparative shortness of the time during 
which man has been in possession, the natural 
inference, I say, would seem to be that man him- 
self is only tenant at will and that in turn he also 
will be evicted in order to make room for another 
and a stronger. That is as far as Nature leads 



TEE SPLENDOR OF HER DESTINY. 77 

US on tha^t line, but she has other lines. Take 
the organs of sense as they are called, those 
marvelous instruments or media by dint of which 
the intelligence, whether in brute or man, gets 
itself into connection with the outer world, the 
universe of sight and sound, these also seem to 
suggest possible future creations more marvelous 
still. If such amazing organs as the eye and the 
ear could gradually be built up from small be- 
ginnings why should there not be developed in 
future ages, and for a higher order of beings, 
senses as much beyond those vf hich we possess in 
range and accuracy as ours are beyond those of 
insects ? Here again, Nature brings us up to a 
certain point, suggests conclusions not flattering 
to our vanity, and then leaves us. "Were we 
shut up to her prophecies and to hers alone, we 
should expect nothing better for man in the 
future than extinction, with this questionable bit 
of encouragement thrown in by way of con- 
solation, that the race which is to succeed and to 
replace ours will, in all probability, be every way 
stronger and better equipped than we were, of 
larger capacity, keener perceptions, more vigor- 
ous grasp, in fact, to all intents and purposes a 
new order of beings. 

But when we turn from Nature to History, 
from God's picture-book to His story-book we 
get an entirely fresh view of the matter, for now 
we find that there has been given to man a 



78 FSYCRE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

power of renewal, a capacity for boundless im- 
provement, a gift of movement, onward and up- 
ward the like of which the brute creation is 
utterly unable to show. Not only has man suc- 
ceeded in supplementing the deficiencies of his 
senses by mechanical inventions like the micro- 
scope and the telescope, those wonderful con- 
trivances for extending the power of sight in two 
opposite directions, — not only so, but he is also 
found to have received, at a certain definite point 
in the past which we call the Christian Era, a 
mysterious spiritual impulse, the effects of which 
have already been wonderful beyond all account, 
and promise to eventuate in results more wonder- 
ful still. The mournful inference, therefore, 
which we drew from our glance at the natural 
history of the past; namely, that man would 
probably disappear altogether, just as the cre- 
ations that held possession here before he came 
had disappeared, this sad conclusion no longer 
binds us. Man is found to have what no one of 
them could lay claim to, namely, a power of 
growth from within, a gift of rising from level 
to level, without in any measure losing the char- 
acteristics that make him man. 

This inspiriting thought of the undeveloped 
possibilities of the human soul, is what lights up 
the New Testament with a glory not of earth. 
St. John exults in it. " Beloved, now are we the 
sons of God," he cries, and then with a wise reti- 



THE SPLENDOR OF HEB DESTINY. 79 

cence he adds, " it doth not yet appear what we 
shall be ; but we know that when He shall ap- 
pear we shall be like Him, for we see Him as He 
is." "What a refreshing contrast this to the style 
of certain modern writers who profess to know 
so much more about the details of our future ex- 
istence than God's revelation of His purpose tells. 
Why should we be so nervously anxious to be in- 
formed about particulars ? St. John was willing 
to wait, why should not we be willing to wait ? 
There is another and a fuller revelation coming 
by and by, he says, the hidden Christ is to appear 
again, we are to see Him, not in dim shadow, not 
under mystic symbol, not parable-fashion and in 
enigma, but as He is. Then will our destiny 
also appear, with a distinctness not now possible, 
— for the seeing Him as He is will, we are as- 
sured, make us resemble Him. 

The same thought in a somewhat diJBferent form 
took a powerful hold upon the intellect and im- 
agination of St. Paul. 

He puts Christ, you remember, and Adam in 
contrast, as representing two entirely different 
levels of existence. In Adam all die, that is 
Nature ; in Christ shall all be made alive, that is 
the higher life which is brought in to save us 
from Nature. " The first man Adam became a 
living soul, the last Adam became a life-giving 
spirit." "As is the earthy such are they also 
that are earthy, and as is the heavenly such are 



80 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

they also that are heavenly." At bottom, the 
two apostles are, you see, completely in accord. 
" We shall be like Him," says St. John. " We 
shall also bear the image of the heavenly," says 
St. Paul. The two utterances are but different 
expressions of the one thought, that in Christ 
humanity has been lifted up to a higher table- 
land to which by its own unaided effort it never 
could have climbed, and that a destiny is in store 
for the soul the splendor of which can only be 
imagined by those who discern in the Son of 
Mary the lineaments of the Son of God. We 
have summoned two apostles to the witness-stand, 
let us call a third. Hear also what St. Peter 
saith. " Grace and peace be multiplied unto you 
through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our 
Lord, according as His divine power hath given 
us all things that pertain unto life and godliness 
. . . whereby are given us exceeding great 
and precious promises, that by these ye might 
be partakers of His divine nature." 

Here we have three New Testament writers 
all bearing testimony to the same point ; namely, 
the grandeur of the as yet unrealized possibilities 
of the human soul, St. John telling us that we 
shall be like Christ for we shall see Him as He is ; 
St. Paul predicting a certain marvelous change, 
to be effected in the twinkling of an eye, when 
this mortal puts on immortality ; St. Peter dar- 
ing to use such strong language as I just now 



THE 8PLEND0B OF HEB DESTINY. 81 

quoted with reference to the lifting up of human 
nature until it becomes partaker of the divine. 
Thus history and prophecy, the story-book and 
the dream-book combine to throw into Nature's 
outline-pictures a fulness of color and of mean- 
ing, lacking which they would be dismal and 
discouraging indeed. Nature does, it is true, pre- 
dict progress, but progress of that strenuous sort 
which brushes old things aside to make room for 
new with a look of absolute indifference. What 
cares she for man, when he has played his little 
part any more than she cared for the gigantic 
reptiles that peopled the earth before man ar- 
rived ? She let them go without a pang when 
man came, now let man go since his purpose has 
been served. " Clear the stage, ye fire and heat, 
ye frost and cold, ye seas and floods, clear the 
stage, burn out or drown out all mankind, that a 
new act of the long drama may begin." This is 
the sharp mandate which we seem to hear issu- 
ing from Nature's lips ; but, meanwhile, Christ's 
followers resting upon the lessons of history and 
the intimations of prophecy are bold to keep on 
saying to one another in a tone of quiet confi- 
dence, — " Nevertheless, — nevertheless, we, ac- 
cording to his promise, look for new heavens 
and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteous- 
ness." 

And this suggests, what ought always in such 
inquiries as this of ours to be remembered, that 



82 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

it is no part of the soul's destiny that she should 
be saved alone. The salvation which Christ 
promises is a '' common salvation." We are they 
who look not for celestial hermitageSj but for a 
heavenly city. Nothing in all the dream book of 
prophecy is so magnificent as the promise of 
the Jerusalem which is above. 

Beauty is to be its characteristic. Men's cities, 
the best of them, all leave much to be desired. 
Each has its own strong point, one is admirable 
in this regard, another admirable in that; but 
not one of them is there that is altogether admi- 
rable. Cain was the first city-builder, and his 
mark smirches every city that has been builded 
since his day. Just on the edge of the old Jeru- 
salem lay Gehenna, the valley of Hinnom, the 
receptacle of all that was deadly and putrescent, 
the home of carcases and filth, the very type and 
synonym of Hell. No great city exists to-day 
that has not its valley of Hinnom, its purlieus of 
blackness and death. We make brave attempts 
to screen it all with our fine architecture, we lay 
out our parks and our drives and say, " Behold is 
it not beautiful ! " but we know perfectly well 
how futile is the endeavor to obliterate the domi- 
nant ugliness which curses our best efforts at 
city-building. Better things are destined for that 
soul in us which so passionately hungers and 
thirsts after beauty than these poor attempts. 
God, the great architect, is building a city of his 



THE SPLENDOR OF HEB DESTINY. 83 

own for man, and when it is done we shall know 
what real beauty means. 

'* Jerusalem high tower thy glorious walls, 
Would God I were in thee." 

That is the Church's homesick song. Do not 
think of it as the utterance of a sentimental 
longing devoid of all promise of satisfaction, 
think of it rather as a desire prompted by the in- 
timations of prophecy and destined to be met, in 
God's good time, by a gratification richer and 
deeper than we have ever dared to dream. 

We need not distress ourselves as to the local- 
ity of the eternal city. He who can so marvel- 
ously plan, may be trusted to use good judgment 
in the choice of a site. I was reading not long 
ago a book the author of which took great com- 
fort in the belief that heaven, the heaven of the 
Bible, and the present home of the ascended 
Christ was in the star Alcyone, one of the group 
popularly known as the Pleiades. He had worked 
it all out, and was apparently almost as clear in 
his mind upon the point as if it had been a ques- 
tion of the latitude and longitude of London. I 
cannot think that speculations of this sort are of 
any real value. They interest me no more than 
do the somewhat similar endeavors to cipher out 
the date of the millenium. 

What I want to know about the city is some- 
thing, — I am content that it should not be very 



84 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

much, — something about the general look of it, 
and something about the sort of life that is lived 
within its walls. This it has pleased God to tell 
me through lips that I can trust. That the city- 
is fair I know ; that the city is free I know ; that 
the city is holy I know ; that the city is eternal 
I know. What lack I yet ? Surely nothing un- 
less it be spirit and courage to hold this begin- 
ning of my confidence steadfast unto the end, 
yes and my vision clear of the sort of city most 
to be desired, for it is not after all a sociological 
paradise scientifically mapped and administered 
by experts that the soul covets for her destiny 
but the real heaven of God, our Fatherland in- 
deed. 



THE CUKE OF SOULS. 



THE CUEE OF SOULS. 

The Christian religion has its philosophical 
side on which it fronts the intellect, and it has 
also what we may call its sympathetic side on 
which it fronts the affections. 

Looked at on its philosophical side Christ's re- 
ligion is a disclosure of certain distinct and defi- 
nite truths. These truths admit of being stated, 
of being put into affirmative sentences, gram- 
matical propositions, they can be taught and 
learned, and taken in their wholeness they make 
up what we know as the Catholic Creed. Just 
at present there is a strong disposition in some 
quarters to blur and slur this aspect of Christ's 
religion, but it cannot be blurred or slurred for 
long. Christianity has always professed to be a 
religion with a message, and the Church must 
cease to be the Church if forced into the confes- 
sion that she has nothing to tell. That the ap- 
peal of religion to the intellect may be too heav- 
ily emphasized, that the importance of correct 
thinking in connection with things spiritual may 
be cruelly and even absurdly exaggerated is of 
course true. Strong-minded men find in the play 
of brain-power the same sort of excitation that 
athletes have in feats of bodily strength ; they 

87 



88 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

" drink delight of battle," with their peers ; and 
it is no wonder that in days when more men of 
strong mind went into the ministry than went 
elsewhere, religion should far too often have 
come to be reckoned a form of thought only ; a 
message to the mind and to the mind alone ; a 
thing to be argued for and defended, illustrated, 
systematized and explained. 

But the Christian ministry has been set here in 
the world to do something more than teach. 
Man hungers for the bread of knowledge but he 
thirsts for the wine of love, and that is but a 
mutilated sacrament which gives him the one and 
withholds from him the other. Religion has its 
sympathetic area, its realm of the affections, its 
domain of what is personal as contrasted with 
what is impersonal and abstract, and it is here 
that we come upon the " cure of souls." Accord- 
ing to the Christian conception of the thing, a 
minister is one who has had a group or cluster of 
persons, — of conscious, thinking, feeling, purpose- 
ful and responsible persons authoritatively com- 
mitted to his charge for a distinct and definite 
purpose, namely, that as persons, each one differ- 
ing from every other one, and yet shares all in a 
certain common possession which we know as 
human nature, they may spiritually be helped 
and bettered, watched over and fed. It was in 
making provision to this end that our Lord Jesus 
Christ more especially disclosed His heavenly am- 



THE CURE OF SOULS. 89 

bassadorship, gave proof of the divineness of His 
mission. He taught truth even as the philoso- 
phers before Him had taught it, but He did also 
what no philosopher has ever essayed before or 
since, He ordained a " Ministry," He chose men 
and sent them forth with power, yes, power to heal, 
power to help, power to console. Much increment 
accrues to the thought of ministers as teachers the 
moment we apprehend this further thought of 
them as men charged with that higher prerogative, 
sympathy. 

Few people realize what a large place the prin- 
ciple of cure or care holds in the world's life. 
Things as well as persons, tend to deterioration 
unless they are looked after. If a man builds a 
house he must take care of it or it will crumble ; 
if he plants a garden he must take care of it or 
it will run to weeds, the young of all animals 
have to be cared for a little while or they perish ; 
and the higher the grade of animal the longer 
and more anxious will be the period of care. 
Even so it is with the souls of men, they call for 
care, watchful, assiduous, patient, loving care. 
We were put into this world to help each other. 
God's law for nature may be the survival of the 
fittest through the struggle for life, but His law 
for man, as promulgated through His Son, is tha.t 
they who are strong shall bear the infirmities of 
the weak." Of this principle, the minister is the 
appointed representative. He stands for the 



90 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF TME SOUL. 

truth that men owe one another care or cure, and 
only in so far as he in his own person, exempli- 
fies the Good Shepherd's watchfulness over the 
flock does he deserve his title. There is no harm 
in thinking that one reason why the chosen peo- 
ple were suflfered in God's providence to become 
a pastoral people rather than any other kind of a 
people was that this conception of tenderness as 
blended with carefulness might become ingrained 
into their whole habit of thought, thus making 
such a Psalm as the Twenty-third possible and 
such a chapter as the Tenth chapter of St. John 
intelligible. 

We trace the apostolic succession of the good 
Shepherds all the way down from Abraham to 
Him who alone completely and perpetually em- 
bodies the conception. Men they were, full of 
generous devotion to the well-being of their 
flocks and with that sense of responsibility, 
which is the measure of character, never absent 
from them. Leaders they were, not drovers ; 
" shepherd-kings," but never shepherd-tyrants. 
Jacob was such a one, conscientious in the keep- 
ing of the flock, "In the day the drouth con- 
sumed me," he declares, " and the frost by night." 
Moses the great, he also was a shepherd during 
one of the reaches of his long career. He was 
leading the flock of Jethro on the slope of Horeb 
Avhen the call to go after the lost sheep in Egypt 
reached him. David as a boy kept the sheep at 



THE CUBE OF SOULS. 91 

Bethlehem, and when the lion and the bear came 
prowling about the fold he slew them. Thus, 
gradually, was evolved the type to which the 
mission of the Son of God was destined to give 
an everlasting significance. And now that He 
has come, the great Shepherd of all souls, and 
has set upon earth His sheep-fold, men are hav- 
ing their eyes open to understand how the whole 
human race is potentially His flock. What then 
really are those who are called and who call 
themselves ministers, priests, clergymen ? Simply 
His under-shepherds, that is all. When the title 
is searched, when the tokens tarred upon the 
fleeces are investigated, we find that all the 
sheep belong to but one owner, the Eternal 
Father, that they are shepherds but by one shep- 
herd, the Eternal Son, and that they who help 
Him are but His servants, servants entrusted with 
authority, to be sure, servants who have a right 
to be respected, not drudges, not menials, but 
still in a true sense men acting under commission, 
the custodians, not the originators of power, rep- 
resentatives, not principals, men sent by one 
higher than themselves charged with an errand 
and a task. These distinctions are significant 
ones. I do not think it is possible to overstate 
the dignity of the office of the Christian minister. 
I do think it is possible grievously to misstate it. 
The real dignity of the office lies in the fact 
that it is designed to be symbolical of the work 



92 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF TEE SOUL. 

of Christ Himself. " Feed my sheep/' He says 
to Peter, just as he is on the point of taking a 
last leave of Him ; — " Feed my sheep." It is not 
a general instruction to Simon Peter to take up 
the calling of a shepherd, it is a definite and 
particular command to attend to his, Christ's 
sheep. The minister's function is, therefore, a 
representative function, and like every represent- 
ative he is bound never to lose out of sight or 
out of mind the thing he represents. He must 
never, so to speak, set up for himself. Cannot 
the origin of all or of almost all of the grievances 
which, here or there, at one time or another, 
have been alleged against the Christian ministry, 
be traced to a forgetfulness of this cardinal 
truth ? How comes it that we have in our lan- 
guage such a sinister word as " priest-craft " ? H 
a priest be a reputable person his craft ought not 
to be a disreputable craft. Whence again, such 
unpleasantly suggestive phrases as " sacerdotal 
assumption," " prelatical tyranny," " hierarchical 
pride," and the like ? It is easy enough to at- 
tribute the coining of such words to pure spite, 
but while that would account for their getting 
into circulation it would not account for their 
staying in circulation. A far more probable ac- 
count of their genesis and of their prevalence is 
that they stand for and describe certain very 
real and objectionable misrepresentations of 
what the ministry was designed by Christ to be. 



THE CUBE OF SOULS. 93 

Theirs is an entirely false conception of the dig- 
nity of the Christian ministry who would have 
us suppose that that dignity can be enhanced by 
high-sounding titles or by the loud assertion of 
spiritual prerogative. The dignity of the min- 
istry consists in the fact that it is a service ren- 
dered to the sons of men in the JSTame and by 
the authority of the Son of God. When we 
think of it, the origin of most of what the world 
recognizes as distinction is traceable to service 
rendered. In monarchical countries, titles are 
transmitted by heredity just as estates are, but if 
you follow the title back to the day when it was 
conferred, yau find that in the first instance it 
was earned by service. At a given crisis in the 
kingdom's history, on some battlefield, at some 
council board, a man made himself specially 
useful to the king and was ennobled. Yes, de- 
pend upon it, " I serve " is the proudest of all 
the armorial ensigns, and the one that best ex- 
presses what is most central to the religion of 
Jesus Christ. 

To the shepherd of the sheep who has in him 
the true conception of what his calling imports 
any flock that may in the providence of God be 
assigned to him is his " beautiful flock," beauti- 
ful for the simple reason that it is a flock, and 
that, in a sense, it is his. A group of people, a 
little company of men, women and children, an 
actual family of hmnan souls, to care for, to look 



94 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF TEE SOUL. 

after, to counsel, to pray for, to extricate from 
their troubles, to guide in their perplexities, to 
console in their sorrows, to strengthen in faith, 
to cheer with hope and to incite to charity, — 
what could possibly be more attractive to the 
mind's eye than this ? what better deserve that 
supreme epithet beautiful ? 

How strange it is that more young men of 
high spirit and able mind are not drawn toward 
a calling which can be so described ! After all, 
nothing interests like people. Pope's declara- 
tion that " the proper study of mankind is man," 
has become trite just because it is so true. We 
rail, and very properly, at what is known as 
" gossip," but the one excusable thing about gos- 
sip is the humanness of it. That curiosity about 
people should surpass curiosity about things is 
inevitable. People are, really ever so much more 
important than things, and to be more interested in 
people than in things is not only not blameworthy, 
it is creditable. It is the animus of gossip that 
degrades it, not the fact that it has the sayings 
and doings of our neighbors for its subject-mat- 
ter. People, I say, are interesting just because 
they are people, and the charm of the ministry 
is that it puts a man into the most sacred of all 
possible relations to people. Others may serve 
them in a hundred ways, may amuse them, may 
instruct them, may kindle their interest in this 
or that art or science or adventure, but his is the 



THE CUBE OF SOULS. 95 

high function, the golden privilege of showing 
them which way heaven lies, and helping to start 
them on the journey. What could be more 
worthy of any man's best effort than such a 
task? What form of life work promises any- 
thing one-half so good ? The question of the 
desirability of different flocks, so often mooted, 
sinks into utter insignificance when set alongside 
of the high privilege of having any flock at all. 
Every parish is a " good parish," which offers to 
an earnest man the opportunity of doing good. 

Doubtless that minister sustains the ideal re- 
lation to his people who knows, personally, inti- 
mately knows every single one of them. A beau- 
tiful flock, indeed, is that which is so known. 
But who is sufficient for these things ? Possibly 
the village minister, and therein lies the great 
compensating advantage of his position, humble 
in the sight of men, it may be, but really enviable 
in the eye of any one who appreciates what the 
thorough cure of souls involves and demands. 

Many years ago it was my privilege to carry a 
note of introduction to an English clergyman 
who had been settled for a long, long time in a 
quiet little village in Somersetshire. I call it a 
village, — really it was scarcely more than a ham- 
let. It did not look to be more than half the 
size of one of the less considerable of our county 
farming-towns. Yet there I found the most cul- 
tivated and altogether most charming man whom 



96 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL. 

I had met in Europe, an intellectual thorough- 
bred, a scholar to his finger-tips.^ With my crude 
and boyish notions of what constituted greatness, 
I knew not what to make of such a choice. More 
years passed ; and taking up the morning paper, 
one day, I found among the items of foreign 
news the announcement that my friend of the 
little South-of-Engiand rural parish had been 
suddenly lifted out of his obscurity, and by the 
prime minister's appointment made guardian of 
the great cathedral which stands in ''London's 
central roar." And yet, when Dean Church 
died, they buried him, at his own request, not 
where he had a right, in virtue of his office and 
his fame, to lie, in the crypt with Wellington 
and Nelson ; but in the soil of the modest little 
Somersetshire village, where for eighteen years 
he had known the happiness which comes of the 
thorough as contrasted with the superficial cure 
of souls. His beautiful flock, when he came to 
look back over the whole stretch of his life's 
past, was not that which he had seen gathered 
weekly under the huge dome of St. Paul's — for 
that he had only looked upon; it was rather 
those few sheep in what some had accounted a 
wilderness, but which had been to his mind only 
the more beautiful in that they had been not 
merely collectively beheld, but actually and sev- 
erally known and loved. 

>The late Very Rev. R. W. Church, D. D. 



THE CURE OF SOULS, 97 

Such is the pastoral office, the cure of souls, a 
benign and gracious thing, as we must needs ac- 
knowledge, whether it be looked at from the 
minister's or from the people's side. 

How privileged the man who has it for his 
whole endeavor to make goodness look to his 
fellow men more fair, God's service more inviting, 
heaven's coast-line more distinct, death's counte- 
nance less grim. 



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